Hello,

I have been playing this game on and off for a few years now and as I've just realised, most of them years were spent as either a Guild Master or an Officer in a few different guilds. I have acquired a bit of knowledge in the different methods and ideas behind guild leadership and I want to share them with you, just in the hope that I can use my experience to help newly come Guild Masters or newly promoted Officers.

***Disclaimer***

I'm not here to make myself look better than anyone or to suggest that you must learn from me because all my ideas are right. I simply want to share some insights.

This is all based on past experiences I've had with running guilds. I am not running the guild I'm currently in.

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Contact info
Samsquirtz@hotmail.com
or
In-game mail or whispers

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Officers
Officers, to me, are the most important part of a guild. They are the unsung heroes of guild management. I have had a number of wonderful officers in my time. People who were able to settle issues I couldn't myself. To make a guild successful you will need people like this, you will need reliable people that you can trust to hold the guild together when you're not on-line (because let's face it, we can't be there all the time). Officers can also be very helpful with creating guild events, acting as raid leaders in Raiding Guilds and sometimes just for keeping the members chatting and happy.


Recruitment
This differs with every type of guild so I will explain how to go about each way in each section below.

I will say a few words on the new Guild Finder system recently implemented though. This can be very handy for making recruitment slightly easier. I suggest you take a look at it and see how it can benefit you. It functions well for all guilds.
One problem with is that has been mentioned countless times is the lack of notification to a GM or Officers when a new player has applied. This leads to problems with invitation due to the player having logged off by the time the application is noticed. There are ways around this;

Add the applicant to your friends list and whisper them whenever they come on-line again
Keep a regular check on your requests list
Individually mail each applicant and ask them to contact you whenever they can. Be sure and mention what guild you are representing in the mail, some people may have applied to more than one guild.

Guild Websites
It is not necessary to have a guild website and some people will tell you they are useless but I disagree completely. Sites can be one of the handiest thing at a GMs fingertips. They are a great way of communicating with your guild, displaying screen shots of good memories, sharing information about all the different classes and roles and also they are very good for alerting your guild if will not be available to log onto the game for any reason.

They can also be a fantastic help to recruitment. If you list your guild site in your advertisement then people can go look at it and see a lot more information like raid times etc and can also use it to apply. Having a application section to your guild is vital for Raiding and PvP Guilds.

Here's a list of a few different Guild Hosting websites:

www.wowstead.com
www.guildportal.com
www.guildomatic.com
www.guildlaunch.com
www.enjin.com
www.ejeet.com

Guild Bank/Permissions/Repairs
When giving permissions to certain ranks in your guild you must be very careful that you don't give too much to people that you can't trust. Especially with social guilds you are apt to come across ninjas that just want access to the bank so they can steal whatever is available and then scurry off. So be careful.

Repairs are a nice incentive to get people to stay and make them a little bit happier. With the new guild perks it has become a lot easier to keep money in the guild bank so once you have enough you can always allow repairs to core members or whoever you'd like, it's at your discretion. To Raiding guilds I'd advise guild repairs to all raiders because wiping can be costly on the individual player.

There are many different things you can do with your Guild Bank and it's basically up to you and the needs of your guild what you do with it. Some ideas are to separate your tabs into different sections of the game i.e. Low level materials(to help people level professions), Max Level Materials(Herbs, Shards, Leather), Rares and Epics etc.
You can even have an in-Guild auction house where you could sell BoE items for cheaper than the AH. There are a lot of different things you can do.